Famous Spontaneous Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Spontaneous poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous spontaneous poems. These examples illustrate what a famous spontaneous poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Give me the Splendid Silent Sun

by Walt Whitman
 1
GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling; 
Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard; 
Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows; 
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape; 
Give me fresh corn and wheat—give me serene-moving animals, teaching content;
Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus...Read more of this...

Poem (In the morning when it was raining)

by Delmore Schwartz
 In the morning, when it was raining,
Then the birds were hectic and loudy;
Through all the reign is fall's entertaining;
Their singing was erratic and full of disorder:
They did not remember the summer blue
Or the orange of June. They did not think at all
Of the great red and bursting ball
Of the kingly sun's terror and tempest, blazing,
Once the slanting rain threw...Read more of this...

Sunday Morning

by Wallace Stevens
1
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide...Read more of this...

The Tables Turned

by William Wordsworth
An Evening Scene on the Same Subject

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet...Read more of this...

The Tables Turned;

by William Wordsworth
An Evening Scene, on the same Subject,   Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks,  Why all this toil and trouble?  Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,  Or surely you'll grow double.   The sun, above the mountain's head,  A freshening lustre mellow  Through all the long green fields has spread,  His first sweet evening yellow.   Books! 'tis dull and endless strife,  Come, here the woodland...Read more of this...

We Two—How Long We were Fool'd

by Walt Whitman
 WE two—how long we were fool’d! 
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape, as Nature escapes; 
We are Nature—long have we been absent, but now we return; 
We become plants, leaves, foliage, roots, bark; 
We are bedded in the ground—we are rocks;
We are oaks—we grow in the openings side by side; 
We browse—we are two among the wild herds, spontaneous as...Read more of this...

Spontaneous Me

by Walt Whitman
 SPONTANEOUS me, Nature, 
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with, 
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder, 
The hill-side whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash, 
The same, late in autumn—the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark
 green,
The rich coverlid of the grass—animals and birds—the private untrimm’d
...Read more of this...

Proclamation Without Pretension

by Tristan Tzara
 Art is going to sleep for a new world to be born
"ART"-parrot word-replaced by DADA,
PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief

The talent THAT CAN BE LEARNED makes the
poet a druggist TODAY the criticism
of balances no longer challenges with resemblances

Hypertrophic painters hyperaes-
theticized and hypnotized by the hyacinths
of the hypocritical-looking muezzins

CONSOLIDATE THE HARVEST OF EX-
ACT CALCULATIONS

Hypodrome of immortal guarantees: there is
no such thing as importance...Read more of this...

The Fascination Of Whats Difficult

by William Butler Yeats
 The fascination of what's difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood
Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
As though it dragged road-metal. My curse on plays
That have to be...Read more of this...

O sweet spontaneous

by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty .how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)...Read more of this...

Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV To Richard Boyle

by Alexander Pope
 Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se 
Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures: 
Et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe jocoso, 
Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetae, 
Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque
Extenuantis eas consulto.
(Horace, Satires, I, x, 17-22)
'Tis strange, the miser should his cares employ 
To gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy:
Is it less strange, the prodigal should...Read more of this...

Elegy to the Memory of Richard Boyle Esq

by Mary Darby Robinson
 NEAR yon bleak mountain's dizzy height, 
That hangs o'er AVON's silent wave; 
By the pale Crescent's glimm'ring light, 
I sought LORENZO's lonely grave. 

O'er the long grass the silv'ry dew, 
Soft Twilight's tears spontaneous shone; 
And the dank bough of baneful yew 
Supply'd the place of sculptured stone. 

Oft, as my trembling steps drew near, 
The aëry voice of...Read more of this...

Ode to Valour

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Inscribed to Colonel Banastre Tarleton]


TRANSCENDENT VALOUR! ­godlike Pow'r! 
Lord of the dauntless breast, and stedfast mien! 
Who, rob'd in majesty sublime, 
Sat in thy eagle-wafted car, 
And led the hardy sons of war, 
With head erect, and eye serene, 
Amidst the arrowy show'r; 
When unsubdued, from clime to clime, 
YOUNG AMMON taught exulting Fame 
O'er earth's vast space to...Read more of this...

Constructions/reconstructions

by Barry Tebb
 I

Living in a land

Where only the dying correspond

I am borne on the wings of love



II

I cannot join in a poem

The interstices of clouds

I watched a lapwing

Hover in the air

Glide in an arc

Veer from the sheer cliff



III

Who shall I meet

On this journey to eternity?

Alone and yet not alone

The dust of immortality

Lies in strangers’ eyes

Girls in all the beauty

Of their youth,...Read more of this...

The First Night Of Fall And Falling Rain

by Delmore Schwartz
 The common rain had come again
Slanting and colorless, pale and anonymous,
Fainting falling in the first evening
Of the first perception of the actual fall,
The long and late light had slowly gathered up
A sooty wood of clouded sky, dim and distant more and
 more
Until, at dusk, the very sense of selfhood waned, 
A weakening nothing halted, diminished or denied or set
...Read more of this...

The Reply to Time

by Mary Darby Robinson
 O TIME, forgive the mournful song 
That on thy pinions stole along, 
When the rude hand of pain severe 
Chas'd down my cheek the burning tear; 
When sorrow chill'd each warm desire 
That kindles FANCY'S lambent fire; 
When HOPE, by fost'ring FRIENDSHIP rear'd, 
A phantom of the brain appear'd; 
Forgive the song, devoid of art, 
That stole spontaneous from...Read more of this...

Faust In Old Age

by Delmore Schwartz
 "Poet and veteran of childhood, look!
See in me the obscene, for you have love,

For you have hatred, you, you must be judge,
Deliver judgement, Delmore Schwartz.

Well-known wishes have been to war,
The vicious mouth has chewed the vine.

The patient crab beneath the shirt
Has charmed such interests as Indies meant.

For I have walked within and seen each sea,
The fish that flies, the...Read more of this...

The Widows Home

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Close on the margin of a brawling brook
That bathes the low dell's bosom, stands a Cot;
O'ershadow'd by broad Alders. At its door
A rude seat, with an ozier canopy
Invites the weary traveller to rest.
'Tis a poor humble dwelling; yet within,
The sweets of joy domestic, oft have made
The long hour not unchearly, while the Moor
Was covered with deep snow, and the...Read more of this...

The Lion For Real

by Allen Ginsberg
 "Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative..."


I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunnette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Patterson and stayed two days

Called up old Reichian analyst
who'd kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana
'It's happened' I panted 'There's a...Read more of this...

The Fortune-Favored

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Ah! happy he, upon whose birth each god
Looks down in love, whose earliest sleep the bright
Idalia cradles, whose young lips the rod
Of eloquent Hermes kindles--to whose eyes,
Scarce wakened yet, Apollo steals in light,
While on imperial brows Jove sets the seal of might!
Godlike the lot ordained for him to share,
He wins the garland ere he runs the race;
He learns life's...Read more of this...

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